


The Right Spot

by glymr



Category: Batman - Fandom, DCU - Comicverse, Robin - Fandom
Genre: Christmas, Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-12-10 20:38:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/789918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glymr/pseuds/glymr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>None of his prior experiences had prepared him for Christmas at the Manor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Right Spot

His parents' tree had always been dark green with white flocking sprayed over the branches. It split into four pieces, a top, a middle, and a bottom piece, and then the stand underneath. At the beginning of every year it had been packed away with the lights and the ornaments still on it, and at the end of every year it had been carefully removed from its boxes and re-assembled by their housekeeper while Tim was at school. The strings of garish lights flashed and flickered and tended to give Tim a headache, so he'd generally stayed out of the living room during the month of December.

He couldn't remember any particular smell associated with the tree, other than a slightly dusty, musty smell from the old cardboard boxes the tree had been stored in. One year he'd brought home some cinnamon-scented pine cones he'd purchased from someone on a street corner, but his mother had complained that they were too strong and thrown them out.

None of his prior experiences had prepared him for Christmas at the Manor.

The smell of pine was almost overwhelming. Perhaps that wasn't surprising, considering the twelve-foot tree that dominated the room. It had taken Alfred, Bruce, Dick and Tim *all day* to decorate the thing, especially because so many of the ornaments had stories attached to them. Apparently it was important for Tim to know that _this_ ornament was the first one that Bruce's parents had purchased together after they'd gotten married, that another had been in Alfred's family for generations, that Dick had made the rather clumsy robin in a pear tree in woodshop class in high school.

Tim drank in each story, silently absorbing each detail as he had every other scrap of information he could find about the unusual family.

Now, on Christmas morning, he sat on the couch and curled his feet under him as he gazed up at the tree. Lights twinkled from every branch, not flashing, just glowing with a gentle, warm light. If Tim looked carefully he could identify individual ornaments...there was the small, silver cat Selina Kyle had given Bruce one year (as Dick had explained with a look of glee)...there was the crystal star from Clark, shimmering against the dark green needles. But it wasn't really necessary to look for the pieces that made up the whole. There was a certain...gestalt to the tree once it was fully decorated, he thought, where it seemed to become more than the sum of its parts.

Under the tree among the other presents were three small boxes he'd carefully wrapped himself. In one lay a little wooden man, brightly painted, hanging from a trapeze. By tugging on the threads that held him together one could make him flip over the bar or do other tricks. In another, nestled in layers of tissue paper, was a tiny snow globe, a shadowy outline of Gotham city inside it. The third contained a miniature white tea pot, delicate and perfect, an exact match to the one from which Alfred would be pouring their tea that very afternoon.

Each gift would be opened, each ornament would be passed around and discussed and then hung carefully on the tree, becoming a part of the whole. In a week they would be packed away with the rest, to be brought out again next year and the year after that, their stories recalled and told to any who didn't yet know them before they were placed with care and love in just the right spot.


End file.
